To be able to locate companies and contacts is important to many businesses. For example, sales people often need to find new potential customers which may be interested in their products or services. Or, recruiters may want to find prospective candidates at other companies.
Several online databases exist that allow users to search for companies and contacts. However, those systems are often cumbersome and difficult to use. For example, some systems require the user to navigate through many pages and options to find contacts (search companies, choose one company, search people at that company, go back to company search page and start over, etc). Users are not able to use both company filters and contact filters at the same time. Also, the systems do not often provide feedback as to how many results may be available. So the user will spend time setting many criteria in hopes of finding the perfect matches, only to be told there are no matches.